


Elegy of an Egg

by GarnetsAndRoses



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Auto-Cannibalism, Character Death, Character Study, Dream SMP Egg, Dream Smp, Dream Team SMP Angst (Video Blogging RPF), Gen, Heavy Angst, Horror, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Introspection, Mentioned Alexis | Quackity, Mentioned Captain Puffy, Mentioned Jack Manifold, Mentioned Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Mentioned Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Mentioned Zak Ahmed, Mind Control, No Dialogue, POV Multiple, Post-Apocalypse, Psychological Trauma, Purple Prose, Survival Horror, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 20:07:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29016336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GarnetsAndRoses/pseuds/GarnetsAndRoses
Summary: Bloodvines creep across the server. Anxiety creeps up the spines of those living there. Death creeps slowly towards its prey.How did they let it get this bad?Scrambled thoughts of SMP characters about the egg, their friends, and everything in between.
Relationships: Alexis | Quackity & Karl Jacobs & Sapnap, Dream SMP Ensemble & TommyInnit, TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF) & Everyone, Zak Ahmed & Darryl Noveschosch
Comments: 6
Kudos: 74





	Elegy of an Egg

**Author's Note:**

> i'm gay for the egg

The egg grows and it does not stop growing. Maybe it never would have stopped. Even as a sproutling it knows the lust for power and the longing for more. More space, more light, more land.

More control.

And isn’t that what matters most? A need to press the complicated politics and strange faction lines into simple order. And if that order must be constructed by the sticky vines of a plant, then so be it.

Badboyhalo knows this. He stands at the head of an empire and guides it steadily. There is nothing in his way that cannot be paved over, or crushed, or entangled until it’s too tired to fight back. As he kicks his legs up on the obsidian table and listens to the cries of whatever poor soul has been trapped in the egg chamber for the past two days, Bad knows that he has it good. He is the leader of the Eggpire with no weaknesses and endless possibilities. Fewer than no weaknesses, now that Skeppy has been turned into yet another puppet of the egg. It doesn’t hurt as much as it first did, seeing his friend dyed in rose hues and dripping with an uncharacteristic stoicness. Maybe no one truly stands behind Bad, but it’s okay. There is not enough resistance and Bad has made his power off of the server’s inability to unite. A demon doesn’t have allies. A demon doesn’t have morals. A demon doesn’t have real connections and anything more is a delusion.

Delusions are what Eret specializes in. She hasn’t looked out of the windows of her tower for weeks and doesn’t plan to any time soon. His throne is covered in eraser shavings and paper scraps from failed letters that will have to be cleaned up, but the last person to hike past the egg’s sprouted patches all the way into the castle was Dream so why bother cleaning? There are other things to focus on. Not better things, but at least they are small things that are almost fixable. Every day they tie together stacks of envelopes and press stamps into warm wax, distractions made for people who need distractions and a past instead of a future. A proposal here, an apology there, a manifesto that would read as something pompous if it weren’t meant to be delivered by the hands of an outcast. Jewel-covered hands, but weak ones nonetheless.

Karl holds the hands of Quackity and Sapnap and holds them tightly. It’s the three of them against the world but only one of them knows it. Each night as they fall asleep Karl can’t help but take the diary out of his bedside drawer and trace his fingers across the drawings. The scribbles of red and the harried notes. They stay with him even as he finds himself in new times and old times and the ones in between where there is a blissful knowledge that he doesn’t have to worry about what is happening back home. To his home. There is a blissful knowledge that maybe when he comes back, he won’t remember what’s happening at all. But Karl always finds himself back in the bed with two figures sleeping at his side and breathing slowly like they don’t know their days are numbered. Then the diary is put away and sleep lets him escape from reality.

There is a member of the server that cannot escape from his reality, or his diary, or anything at all. Despite his long legs that carry him around wooden paths and past friends who do not realize his mind is far, far away from his body, the past always catches up to Ranboo. It finds him in the form of wood and vinyl and paper and fire and dirt. The dirt is always there beneath his slowly plodding feet, breaking up as bloodvines push their way to the surface, and the brown slowly becomes red and stains the soles of Ranboo’s loafers as he once again wanders towards home. One day he sits down and realizes just how much he wishes the dirt would swallow him up before he finds another opportunity to betray his friends.

The dirt has swallowed up Sam, but it’s not all soil. Vines brush against his cheek, and in the cavern there are so many of them he thinks that he could just sink. And keep on sinking. An addled part of his mind wonders what did he do to deserve this, what sin is he paying off by succumbing to the tendrils that seem to wrap his arms and guide them towards his mouth? What must he atone for with his flesh? Sam tries so hard and he tries to help people and he tries to wrap the wounds of the children that come to him with plastered-on grins and handfuls of building materials. The wounds aren’t always physical, though, and they can be old like the creaking planks of the Prime Path or fresh like the upturned land that will serve as his latest project’s construction site. Children shouldn’t have to go through whatever leaves those permanent marks, and he bitterly wonders if this is an exercise in empathy as he digs his teeth into his own skin.

Children shouldn’t have to have wounds, physical or mental, Tubbo knows. It’s not normal waking up in the morning struggling to stretch your head up because of the scar tissue wrapped across your chin and neck, or seeing sparks lighting up the space behind your eyes when you close them too quickly. It’s not normal for anybody but it really _is_ everybody’s job to pretend that everything is okay and that no problems need fixing. So that’s why Tubbo doesn’t mind the phantom pains as he bundles up and makes his way through the white dunes coating Snowchester. From the top of the missile silo, he can barely see the outline of the Greater SMP on the horizon. It’s been getting much more red and not even the dazzling sunrises that routinely send warm light skittering across the tundra can explain it. Tubbo shakes his head and ignores it, instead walking back inside each time the sight catches his attention and distracting himself with the familiar whirring of cranes and the slow beeping of maintenance systems.

Each time a voice passes through his mind, Techno distracts himself with the familiar crackle of the fireplace and the soft yipping of dogs. White noise, as Phil calls it, is one of the singular ways to keep the voices from starting a crescendo in between his ears. It’s comforting and Techno doesn’t deserve that sort of comfort. Life should be harder, there should be something to conquer or beat or win against. Maybe homesteading wasn’t made for him. He figures that maybe he should head back to the Greater SMP, but from Ranboo’s reports it seems to be overtaken by a slowly-expanding egg. What a strange thing for the server to be felled by. Something niggling starts at the back of his brain. The end of the world, or maybe just the end of a story. An egg, but darker and lit up by its own particles. Then it’s gone and Techno stands up to head towards the Syndicate base. There’s paperwork there he has to fill out.

Fundy has paperwork to fill out, right? That’s why he came to the edge of the Prime Path where the White House once stood, right? The only clue is an itch in his hands for a quill that pairs with the vague compulsion to make sure he has finished looking through the stacks of forms left on a nonexistent desk. Fundy sardonically thinks that a life of politics is hard to leave behind, but it’s a little too true to not immediately jettison from his mind. Quackity must be somewhere, he bets, so he begins traversing the pockmarked hills and uneven roads. Red vines of some vaguely sticky substance become visible and Fundy wrinkles his snout. They wrap around every lamppost and stain the grass with red, angry blotches and make walking towards the crest of the hill bordering the L’Manburg crater a complete nightmare. Fundy stares over the edge into the gouge in the earth and at the crimson mass at the bottom, stretching itself out over bedrock. So hopeless, so impossible to stop, so _close_ to devouring the land. Too bad Niki isn’t there to see it.

Niki wants to see it, whatever strange phenomena her only connection to the outside world described. She has been waiting in this cave for what seems like hours, waiting for Jack to come back with news of Tommy’s latest actions. During the last report, her accomplice had warily brought up the topic of an “egg” that was taking over the most populated spots in the server. It’s unbelievable, which Niki shouldn’t be saying. She has been forced to believe so many cold truths, from the facts that no one cared for her and no one was on her side and that no one would put her life over the whims of a child. But it’s very easy to believe that this egg is the cause for Jack’s delay, and the imagination dulled by constant anger is back with a vengeance trying to come up with gorey demises to a plant that Jack may be falling victim to. Niki smacks her forehead with the butt of her hand and stands up from her perch on a freshly-carved ledge. She has to see the state of the server with her own two eyes. Jack is a brother in nuclear arms to her, but it’s only her eyes that will tell the truth.

Dream cannot tell the truth, or at least tries not to, but his eyes know the truth when they see it. His land is overtaken by the egg, crimson as far as the eye can see. It’s a slowly pulsing crimson carpet, tangled around every building and constricting each barely-alive tree until their leaves turn from dry yellow to deep red. His limbs are weak with the fatigue effects draped across the prison, extending even to the roof where he stands overlooking the remnants of what was once _his_ territory. It will be hard work making his way down the prison walls, even without Sam there watching with constant wariness. What did that caution get him? A grave amongst the bloodvines, no doubt. Sighing, Dream contemplates even bothering to look for corpses. The egg, a silent mountain curled tightly in the center of the tentacles that wrap around the continent, has spread too far for mass excavation to be plausible. Dream shakes his head at the idea of escaping prison for a world not even worth living in. How did they let it get this bad?

Tommy sits atop a mountain. It’s bitterly familiar and the haphazard tower of wood and obsidian there only confirmed his suspicions when he first climbed its peak. This mountain has history, and it’s where his will end. Honestly, he could very easily survive thanks to the herd of cows that meanders around the savannah and the river that makes its way over the cliff face in a glistening shower. But there’s no _appeal_ , no reason to try and make that sad and lonely life any better. If there’s one thing Tommy is, it’s being tired of being sad and lonely. He looks towards the horizon and the ocean that he’s sure will soon be tinged red. He looks at the brilliant sunrise and doesn’t resist letting tears flow down his cheeks at the thought of his best friend being left for dead with the egg. He looks, finally, at the meager contents of his backpack that holds no food or water. Just two battered compasses and two battered discs that can’t fit in the hands of only one battered boy.

How did they let it get this bad?

Did they _let_ it get this bad?

Did no one care enough to fix it? Did no one care enough to check? Did no one care about saving people?

How could they do that?

The rising sun casts the mountaintop in rose-blush pinks. Tommy closes his eyes and wishes he could stop seeing red, the red soil that clings to his pant legs or the red sleeves of his shirt or the red smeared across his face from Bad’s trident, thrown as he chased the fleeing child past the tentacle-wrapped mounds that had once been buildings.

The server wasn’t worth it, he thinks. It was only really the people he stayed for, even if they hated fixing up builds or solving their problems normally or talking to each other. Because he loved them. That love is such a distant memory, without the feeling of arms wrapped around him or hands ruffling his hair.

It’s because of a fucking _egg_ that their love was taken away. Tommy takes a second to indulge the rage, grit his teeth while the tears continue to drip into his lap.

Maybe it wasn’t the egg’s fault. It was all of theirs, and he was complicit.

He doesn’t want to die complicit. He will be worse than everyone he hates. He will be a failure.  
  
Tommy closes his eyes. That has to stop, Sam didn’t pat him on the head and tell him to be kind to himself and Puffy didn’t sit him down to talk before letting him leave her office with a lollipop just for him to go on with this self-flagellation. The anguish is left behind with a crater and a wooden tower and a folded uniform.

Death is not an easy escape. It’s a destination. He is sad he’s reached it.

Tommy’s eyes do not open again.

**Author's Note:**

> the egg did nothing wrong. if it mind-controlled half of the populace and slowly suffocated the rest, no it didn't <3
> 
> i hope you enjoyed that ramble i repackaged as a fic! kudos and comments really make my day so i'd love if you left one or the other (both, mayhaps??). maybe yell at me for writing this but stalling on the next chapter of "porcelain can't cover up crimes"! i appreciate any feedback ^w^
> 
> also, join the writer's block! they're such cool mcyt fic writers and there are ~celebrities~ along with some of the best friends i've made. link is https://discord.gg/wd2m28pGjM


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